


the ceiling will break

by helcinda



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 07:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3318806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helcinda/pseuds/helcinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone in this band needs to have a kid before Harry follows through on his threats and actually steals someone else's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ceiling will break

**Author's Note:**

> I helped my best friend put a crib together. And since she's the pregnant one, I was the one doing all the work. Also, I rambled at harriet_vane about this yesterday and she said WAIT IS THIS HOW LOUIS STARTS THE BABY CONVERSATION and I said YESSSSSS so this is really all thanks to her.
> 
> Title from The Unlikely Candidates "Home"
> 
> And finally: this is ridiculous. This is _so ridiculous_ and I love it _so much_.

Louis should have know it would not go well when he almost breaks it before he even opens the shipment box.

(Liam is out for a few hours, which should be more than enough time to put the cot together. It's a bed for a baby, how hard can it possibly be?)

The second time he drops the box, he breaks its fall with his toes, which hurts like a motherfucker, but hopefully minimises the damage. Once he finally figures out how to open the damn thing, there are an encouragingly small number of pieces to put together, and he dutifully carries them all upstairs to the unused room that Liam keeps optimistically calling an office, but in reality is a convenient place for Louis to throw stuff inside and then shut the door so he doesn't have to tidy.

Not responsible enough for a child his arse. He's going to have this room baby ready in no time at all, and then there will be no more reasons to wait, because he is more than capable of co-parenting a child, especially if the other parent is Liam. Liam is amazing with kids, and Louis can't wait to get one just for themselves. That, and someone in this band needs to have a kid before Harry follows through on his threats and actually steals someone else's.

Louis kicks a pile of random shit to the side and dumps the instruction packet and the alarmingly large set of screws and things on the floor. The instruction manual he tosses into the corner - he's put enough Ikea furniture together to know how this should go - and sits down to attempt to figure out which screws go where. After a moment's consideration, he sprawls across the floor to retrieve the manual; a brief look would possibly be beneficial. There's something like fourteen pages of safety warnings, and when he finally gets to the informative section, it's appallingly brief. The first picture has a very helpful diagram of how the posts are meant to fit on to the sides. Step two, distressingly, is already showing a three-quarters completed cot, with nothing remotely useful on how to get to that state.

Guesswork it is. The Tommo way, if you will.

The side rails come together fairly easily, though one side has longer posts than the other, but he figures that will work itself out in a bit and carries on. There's long screws with weird bits on the end that are meant to attach...somewhere into the back. Louis picks up the back section, narrowly avoiding tipping it forward onto his head, and peers at the places where the screws look like they'll fit. All he can figure out is that the posts he's already attached are attached wrong, and the weird bits are meant to anchor the screw somehow, only they have to be held in place, and gravity is not on his side.

Back to the instructions, then, which are still singularly unhelpful. Fuck.

After another twenty minutes of quite creative swearing at the instructions, the hardware, the uneven posts, and his own clumsy fingers, Louis gives himself a break and wanders to the kitchen for tea. This is quite obviously a two-man job, only the second person he'd normally call is the one person he doesn't want to tell yet. Which means he's going to have to settle for Harry. Shit.

_Need your help, come over asap_

He hits send and tosses his phone on the counter, where it skitters across the surface and off the other side. Flipping the switch on the kettle, he smacks his forehead on the countertop a few times for good measure. Fuck this whole day, really.

He leaves his phone where it is - Harry will come over at some point, whether or not he actually responds - and takes his tea with him to make another go of it. When he gets upstairs, the various pieces scattered across the floor seem to have been mating. There were definitely not this many when he left. He sighs, takes a few fortifying sips of tea, and settles down to work.

*

An hour later, the cot is standing on its own. Louis isn't one hundred percent sure how exactly this happened, but no matter, he's not complaining. It even looks like a proper cot, which is to say, like a little baby prison. The metal piece that the mattress sits on - shit, he doesn't have a mattress - is a bit unwieldy, but some creative gymnastics are all it takes to hold it up so he can screw it in. Which he would be able to do, if the posts that he put on to begin with were facing the right way. 

Louis sits down heavily, the metal springs falling out of his hands and slamming into his shin and elbow simultaneously, and stares. No way - no _fucking way_ \- is he taking the whole thing back apart. Except he is. He kind of wants to cry.

Flopping backwards, he heaves a giant sigh and rubs his hands over his face. Just a bit more work, he thinks, trying to psych himself up for this. You've already done this once, it's just doing it backwards and then doing the same thing all over again. He grimaces. This whole internal pep talk thing is very much out of his skill set.

"Right," he says out loud. It's a little muffled by his hands, but there's no one here to hear him, and he feels dangerously close to losing his mind. "Right, then," he says again after a moment. He can do this. He absolutely can do this.

He's still laying on the floor when he hears a quiet, "Right, then," echo him.

Louis drops his hands from his face, letting them flop out to his sides, and looks up and back towards the door. Liam is leaning on the frame, eyebrows pulled together in what looks like a menacing manner from upside down.

"You're not Harry," Louis says stupidly. Then, "Shit, Liam, shit, you weren't supposed to be home yet. I was so close to being done!" Which is a lie, but Liam doesn't have to know that right now.

"I'm not," Liam says warmly, but Louis can't figure out which part he's actually agreeing with. "Are you and Harry having a baby and this is your way of telling me?"

Louis rolls over and groans into the carpet. "It's for _our_ baby. Our...future baby. Whatever."

He feels more than hears Liam walking closer, and then he feels Liam's large, warm hand sweeping up and down Louis's back. Louis turns his head so he doesn't have to look at Liam and sighs.

"Love," Liam says gently, and no. Absolutely not. Louis knows that voice, and he does not want to be handled carefully, or whatever noble thing Liam has going through his mind right now. He sits up abruptly, knocking Liam's hand to the side.

"Look, Liam, you all but told me we weren't responsible enough to adopt, and everyone in the world knows that you're the responsible one out of all of us, so really you meant that _I_ am not ready for a baby, which is so incredibly untrue I don't even know where to begin, and I figured the best way to prove it would be to set up the nursery so then you could see that it's time, I'm more than ready, I want to have a baby with _you_." Louis stops and huffs out a frustrated breath. This isn't at all how he wants this conversation to go. Even worse, he's starting to feel the hot prick of tears behind his eyes. _Again._ He finally lets himself look at Liam, who looks like he's about to cry, too, which is going to make the rest of the day even worse, because if Liam cries then he is _definitely_ going to cry.

"Louis," Liam says, a little roughly, brushing his fingers across Louis's cheek. "Oh, Louis, why didn't you tell me? I only - I only thought it wasn't good timing, for both of us. I've seen you with kids, I know you'll be an excellent dad. I never meant you to think it was something you had to change."

He's probably going to keep going, but Louis can't help himself; he launches forward into Liam's lap, burying his face in Liam's neck and squeezing him round the middle as hard as he can. He should probably tell Liam just how much he loves him in that moment, but what comes out instead is, "That cot is _evil_."

Liam chuckles a little. "Have you been defeated? Do you need reinforcements?"

Louis smiles into Liam's neck. "I was just about to have to take it apart again. And it was so close to being done, too," he whines.

"Tell you what," Liam says, tapping his fingers up and down Louis's spine. "We'll take the cot apart and put it in the closet for now. And I'll talk to a lawyer about getting started with the adoption process. And then maybe when we're home next, we can start properly putting the nursery together. Yeah?"

Louis leans back and kisses Liam once, twice, before squeezing him as tight as he can again. He's so happy he feels like his face might actually split apart.

Liam squeezes back and laughs. "I'm guessing that's a yes?"

"Yes, are you suddenly thick? A thousand times over. God, Liam, I was going to actually construct furniture for you. By myself! I nearly gave myself a concussion!"

Liam starts laughing hard enough to almost jostle Louis out of his lap. Before he can say anything else, there's a loud shriek at the doorway and Harry yells, "Oh my God, where's the baby!"

(It turns out that halfway through their fifth tour, they get a call that there's an unborn infant being placed directly in the system, and would they be back in the UK in time to complete the process? Louis doesn't think twice before saying yes, they'll make it work however they must, and Liam knows before Louis even rings off, his eyes already shiny with tears, which is no surprise, Liam has cried at least once a week since they heard they were approved as a prospective couple. "So now who's going to put the cot together," Louis mutters, "because I'm not going anywhere near that thing again." From the makeup chair across the room, Harry yells, "DOES THIS MEAN THERE'S A BABY NOW!")

((When they finally get home and Liam actually gets the cot put together on the first try, he and Louis stand there for a minute looking at it, Louis a bit amazed he smashed it out so quickly. Then he actually gets a good look inside the cot and it hits him there will be a baby in there soon. A REAL BABY. And he starts crying and Liam laughs at him. He says it's because he's having PTSD flashbacks from the cot. Liam doesn't buy it.))


End file.
